The invention relates to a microcolumn reactor for carrying out reactions on solid phases and/or with biological cells. Thereby, the proposed microcolumn reactor can be applied, for example, with advantage in the following synthesis processes and separation processes:                in Grignard reactions and in the manufacture of other metal-organic compounds,        in drying of solvents by aid of metallic or oxidic dessicants,        in ion exchange processing, and        in the extraction of solid phases.More particularly, the invention will find application in the field of complex combinatorial-chemical operations or in screening operations or in automatically carrying out biological screening processing.        
Sample particles (“beads” or “Perlen”) have been used in separations and synthesis in the laboratory work for decades. These particles mostly are glass or polymeric globules that have diameters of 0.01 mm up to 1 mm, typically about 0.1 mm, which are filled, dry or pre-swelled, as a loose material into a receptacle where they are then flushed by a liquid, whereby an adsorption process or a reaction process takes place between the solid phase surface of the particles and the liquid surrounding the particles. Methods of the column chromatography (for example, gel filtration), of the column extraction, of the immundiagnosis, of the bio-molecule purification (for example, DNA cleaning), as well as of the homogeneous and heterogeneous synthesis (for example, of oligonucleotides, peptides or combinatorial substance libraries) utilize these techniques. With all these methods and devices, a solid-phase is stationarily integrated during the reaction in the reaction vessel, whereby reactants are bound to the solid phase or the latter serves as a reaction surface. The processes comprise a sequence of individual binding operations and separation operations. In such devices, a removal of the stationarily arranged solid phase from the reactor in the course of an operation series is either not provided for, or not possible or it is time consuming and not very practical.